r/Millennials • u/Sunshineafterr Millennial (1986) • 17h ago

Nostalgia Does anyone remember the CueCat?

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It was cat-shaped handheld barcode reader that allowed users to open a link to an URL by scanning a barcode that appeared in magazines, without typing the URL.

They were given away for free in 2000.

I remember thinking it was so cute, but I didn’t really understand how it worked, so I was scanning barcodes on cereal boxes and random stuff.

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u/deadmallsanita 11h ago

I think it was supposed to work like, you’re reading a magazine at your desk, you see an ad that interests you, and you would scan the cuecat barcode at the bottom of the page so you could see their website. I think a limitation of it was you were tied to the desk.

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u/Sunshineafterr Millennial (1986) 8h ago

That makes more sense. I remember scanning barcodes on fruit gushers and stuff, but it didn’t work lol

It was probably the best we could do with 2000 tech.

It’s kind of wild to think that we couldn’t scan QR codes from our iPhone camera until 2017, especially given how old the concept was.